And in an unexpected pew-sharing, the Obama administration has joined conservative state and
federal lawmakers in urging the Supreme Court to tolerate prayers during government meetings.

“For a few minutes each morning, politics and party are set aside,” Rubio and 33 other senators
advised the Supreme Court in a legal brief.

In truth, few senators are usually present during their chaplain’s daily prayer. But on
Wednesday, they’ll be paying heed as the future of such legislative prayers comes before the
Supreme Court. Starting in a modest-sized city in upstate New York, the case has grown into a
potential First Amendment thunderbolt.

The case called Town of Greece v. Galloway, though, almost certainly won’t be a simple
referendum on whether legislative prayers violate the First Amendment’s prohibition against the
government establishing a religion. Prayers by political bodies, which in the United States date
back several centuries, seem safe.

Greece, a town of 96,000 near Rochester, N.Y., has opened its monthly town-board meetings since
1999 with prayers delivered by local clergy members and volunteers. During the first nine years,
every public prayer was led by a Christian.

Two residents — one a Jew, the other an atheist — sued in 2008. The two women, Susan Galloway
and Linda Stephens, noted that town residents attending the board meetings for awards ceremonies,
zoning actions or other reasons must sit through the prayers.

Much debate will revolve around a 1983 Nebraska case in which the Supreme Court decided that
opening legislative sessions with prayers didn’t violate the First Amendment.

Under the ruling in Marsh v. Chambers, legislative prayer is blocked only if the government acts
with “impermissible motive” in selecting prayer-givers or if it uses the prayers to advance a
particular religion or denigrate another.

The Supreme Court now might second-guess the 1983 decision, as some advocacy groups urge, the
American Civil Liberties Union among them. More likely, the justices might retain at least the
basics of the Marsh standard, determine whether the town of Greece met it, and use the new decision
to clarify how future challenges to public prayer will be evaluated.

The Obama administration, for one, suggests an essentially tolerant standard that would, in the
words of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr., keep courts out of “the business of parsing the
theological content or meaning of particular prayers.”